Patient Safety

Health boards must ensure that in the event of any adverse situation that could affect the wellbeing of patients and their families, there is a communication strategy in place to …

Steps be taken to give greater prominence to the online Yellow Card system to those receiving drugs or biological products, or who are being transfused with blood components.

Statutory duty of candour: Individuals in leadership positions should be required by the terms of their appointment and by secondary legislation to record, consider and respond to any concern about …

Cultural Change: That a culture of defensiveness, lack of openness, failure to be forthcoming, and being dismissive of concerns about patient safety be addressed both by taking the steps set …

Regulation: That external regulation of safety in healthcare be simplified. As a first step towards this, there should be a UK wide review by the four health departments of the …

Coordination of patient records with devolved governments: Consideration should be given by the national healthcare administrations in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, to further coordination of their approaches particularly …

In England, Hospital Transfusion Committees and transfusion practitioners take steps to ensure that consideration of tranexamic acid be on every hospital surgical checklist; that hospital medical directors be required to …

In Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland offering the use of tranexamic acid should be considered a treatment of preference in respect of all eligible surgery.

Consideration be given to standardising and benchmarking transfusion performance between hospitals in order to deliver better patient blood management

Review of progress towards the Transfusion 2024 recommendations: Progress in implementation of the Transfusion 2024 recommendations be reviewed, and next steps be determined and promulgated; and that in Scotland the …

Transfusion laboratories: Transfusion laboratories should be staffed (and resourced) adequately to meet the requirements of their functions.

Implementing SHOT reports: That all NHS organisations across the UK have a mechanism in place for implementing recommendations of Serious Hazard of Transfusion (SHOT) reports, which should be professionally mandated, …

Establishing the outcome of every transfusion: That a framework be established for recording outcomes for recipients of blood components. That those records be used by NHS bodies to improve transfusion …

That peer review of haemophilia care should continue to occur as presently practised, with any necessary support being provided by NHS Trusts and Health Boards;

A peer review of each centre should take place not less than once every five years.

We recommend that the government should ensure that the current system of regulation and the collaboration of the regulators serves patient safety as the top priority, given the ineffectiveness of …

We recommend that if, when a hospital investigates a healthcare professional's behaviour, including the use of an HR process, any perceived risk to patient safety should result in the suspension …

We recommend that a national framework or protocol, with guidance, is developed about how recall of patients should be managed and communicated, centred around the needs of the patients and …

There should be protocol to specify the information accompanying a patient on transfer from one hospital to another.

The names of both the consultant responsible and the accountable nurse should be prominently displayed at the bed in order that all can know who is in charge and responsible.

The care plan should be available at the bed and the reasons for any change in treatment should be recorded.

Confidential on-line opportunities for reporting clinical concerns should be developed, implemented and reviewed.

Trust Chairs and Non-Executive Board Members should be trained to scrutinise the performance of Executive Directors particularly in relation to patient safety objectives.

Support and protection should be given to those who properly fulfil their duty of candour.

Trusts should ensure health care data is expertly analysed for patterns of poor performance and issues of patient safety.

The highest priority should be accorded the development and improvement of leadership skills at every level of the health service including both executive and non-executive Board members.

The Department, HBSC, PHA, RQIA and HSC Trusts should synchronise electronic patient safety incident and risk management software systems, codes and classifications to enable effective oversight and analysis of regional …

The interests of patient safety must prevail over the interests engaged in clinical negligence litigation. Such litigation can become an obstacle to openness. A government committee should examine whether clinical …

Professional regulatory bodies should clarify and reinforce the duty of professional staff to report concerns about clinical services, particularly where these relate to patient safety, and the mechanism to do …

There is no mechanism to scrutinise perinatal deaths or maternal deaths independently, to identify patient safety concerns and to provide early warning of adverse trends. This shortcoming has been clearly …

Scottish Government should ensure that the Healthcare Environment Inspectorate (HEI) has the power to close a ward to new admissions if the HEI concludes that there is a real risk …

Scottish Government should ensure that where major changes in patient services are planned there should be clear and effective plans in place for continuity of safe patient care.

Scottish Government (whether through HPS, HIS, the HAI Task Force or otherwise) should as a matter of standard practice ensure that reports published in the UK and in other relevant …

Individual reports of serious incidents which have not been otherwise reported should be shared with a regulator for investigation, as the receipt of such a report may be evidence that …

While it may be impracticable for the National Patient Safety Agency or its successor to have its own team of inspectors, it should be possible to organise for mutual peer …

Data held by the National Patient Safety Agency or its successor should be open to analysis for a particular purpose, or others facilitated in that task.

The National Patient Safety Agency or its successor should regularly share information with Monitor.

The Care Quality Commission should be enabled to exploit the potential of the safety information obtained by the National Patient Safety Agency or its successor to assist it in identifying …

Consideration should be given to whether information from incident reports involving deaths in hospital could enhance consideration of the hospital standardised mortality ratio.

If the Health Protection Agency or its successor, or the relevant local director of public health or equivalent official, becomes concerned that a provider's management of healthcare associated infections is …

Reporting of incidents of concern relevant to patient safety, compliance with fundamental standards or some higher requirement of the employer needs to be not only encouraged but insisted upon. Staff …

The commissioner is entitled to and should, wherever it is possible to do so, apply a fundamental safety and quality standard in respect of each item of service it is …

In selecting indicators and means of measuring compliance, the principal focus of commissioners should be on what is reasonably necessary to safeguard patients and to ensure that at least fundamental …

Standards should be divided into: Fundamental standards of minimum safety and quality – in respect of which non-compliance should not be tolerated. Failures leading to death or serious harm should …

Commissioners should have powers of intervention where substandard or unsafe services are being provided, including requiring the substitution of staff or other measures necessary to protect patients from the risk …

Commissioners should have contingency plans with regard to the protection of patients from harm, where it is found that they are at risk from substandard or unsafe services.

The first priority for any organisation charged with responsibility for performance management of a healthcare provider should be ensuring that fundamental patient safety and quality standards are being met. Such …

Any differences of judgement as to immediate safety concerns between a performance manager and a regulator should be discussed between them and resolved where possible, but each should recognise its …

Metrics need to be established which are relevant to the quality of care and patient safety across the service, to allow norms to be established so that outliers or progression …

The General Medical Council should amend its standards for undergraduate medical education to include a requirement that providers actively seek feedback from students and tutors on compliance by placement providers …

The Government, through regulation, but after so far as possible achieving consensus between the public and professional representatives, should provide for the fundamental standards which should define outcomes for patients …

Training visits should make an important contribution to the protection of patients: Obtaining information directly from trainees should remain a valuable source of information – but it should not be …

The General Medical Council should in the course of its review of its standards and regulatory process ensure that the system of medical training and education maintains as its first …

The General Medical Council's system of reviewing the acceptability of the provision of training by healthcare providers must include a review of the sufficiency of the numbers and skills of …

The General Medical Council should immediately review its approved practice settings criteria with a view to recognition of the priority to be given to protecting patients and the public.

The Department of Health, through the National Quality Board, should ensure that procedures are put in place for facilitating the identification of patient safety issues by training regulators and cooperation …

The Government should consider urgently the introduction of a common requirement of proficiency in communication in the English language with patients and other persons providing healthcare to the standard required …

Where death or serious harm has been or may have been caused to a patient by an act or omission of the organisation or its staff, the patient (or any …

Guidance and policies should be reviewed to ensure that they will lead to compliance with Being Open, the guidance published by the National Patient Safety Agency.

A statutory obligation should be imposed to observe a duty of candour: On healthcare providers who believe or suspect that treatment or care provided by it to a patient has …

The NHS and all who work for it must adopt and demonstrate a shared culture in which the patient is the priority in everything done. This requires: A common set …

The leadership framework should be improved by increasing the emphasis given to patient safety in the thinking of all in the health service. This could be done by, for example, …

The care offered by a hospital should not end merely because the patient has surrendered a bed – it should never be acceptable for patients to be discharged in the …

All staff and visitors need to be reminded to comply with hygiene requirements. Any member of staff, however junior, should be encouraged to remind anyone, however senior, of these.

In the absence of automatic checking and prompting, the process of the administration of medication needs to be overseen by the nurse in charge of the ward, or his/her nominated …

The recording of routine observations on the ward should, where possible, be done automatically as they are taken, with results being immediately accessible to all staff electronically in a form …

The healthcare systems regulator should promote effective enforcement by: use of a low threshold of suspicion; no tolerance of non-compliance with fundamental standards; and allowing no place for favourable assumptions, …

Zero tolerance: A service incapable of meeting fundamental standards should not be permitted to continue. Breach should result in regulatory consequences attributable to an organisation in the case of a …

The Department of Health should ensure that there is senior clinical involvement in all policy decisions which may impact on patient safety and well-being.

It should be an offence for death or serious injury to be caused to a patient by a breach of these regulatory requirements, or, in any other case of breach, …

The healthcare regulator must be free to require or recommend immediate protective steps where there is reasonable cause to suspect a breach of fundamental standards, even if it has yet …

Where aware of concerns that patient safety is at risk, Monitor and all other regulators of healthcare providers must have in place policies which ensure that they constantly review whether …

Where patient safety is believed on reasonable grounds to be at risk, Monitor and any other regulator should be obliged to take whatever action within their powers is necessary to …

Where a provider is under regulatory investigation, there should be some form of external performance management involvement to oversee any necessary interim arrangements for protecting the public.

A coordinated collection of accurate information about the performance of organisations must be available to providers, commissioners, regulators and the public, in as near real time as possible, and should …

The core values expressed in the NHS Constitution should be given priority of place and the overriding value should be that patients are put first, and everything done by the …

The Care Quality Commission should have a clear responsibility to review decisions not to comply with patient safety alerts and to oversee the effectiveness of any action required to implement …

In reaching out to patients, consideration should be given to including expectations in the NHS Constitution that: Staff put patients before themselves; They will do everything in their power to …

No NHS trust should be given support to make an application to Monitor unless, in addition to other criteria, the performance manager (the Strategic Health Authority cluster, the Department of …

The assessment criteria for authorisation should include a requirement that applicants demonstrate their ability to consistently meet fundamental patient safety and quality standards at the same time as complying with …

The Secretary of State's support for an application should not be given unless he is satisfied that the proposed applicant provides a service to patients which is, at the time …

The assessment for an authorisation of applicant for foundation trust status should include a full physical inspection of its primary clinical areas as well as all wards to determine whether …

In order to determine whether a case is so serious, either in terms of the breach of safety requirements or the consequences for any victims, that the public interest requires …

The National Patient Safety Agency's resources need to be well protected and defined. Consideration should be given to the transfer of this valuable function to a systems regulator.

Reporting to the National Reporting and Learning System of all significant adverse incidents not amounting to serious untoward incidents but involving harm to patients should be mandatory on the part …

The reporting system should be developed to make more information available from this source. Such reports are likely to be more informative than the corporate version where an incident has …